SSH

CA Certificates Stored in File

To configure the client to trust the server's certificate by using CA certificates stored in a file, perform the following tasks. Replace the names and IDs with those appropriate to your system:

  1. Copy the CA certificate(s) to the client machine. You can either copy the X.509 certificate(s) as such, or you can copy a PKCS #7 package including the CA certificate(s).

    Certificates can be extracted from a PKCS #7 package by specifying the -7 option with ssh-keygen-g3.

  2. Define the CA certificate(s) to be used in host authentication in the ssh-broker-config.xml file under the general element:

    <cert-validation end-point-identity-check="yes" 
                     socks-server-url="socks://fw.example.com:1080">
      <ldap-server address="ldap://ldap.example.com:389" />
      <ocsp-responder url="http://ocsp.example.com:8090" validity-period="0" /> 
      <ca-certificate name="ssh_ca1"
                     file="ssh_ca1.crt"
                     disable-crls="no"
                     use-expired-crls="100" />
    </cert-validation>         
    

    The client will only accept certificates issued by the defined CA(s).

    You can disable the use of CRLs by setting the disable-crls attribute of the ca-certificate element to "yes".

    [Note]Note

    CRL usage should only be disabled for testing purposes. Otherwise it is highly recommended to always use CRLs.

    Define also the LDAP server(s) or OCSP responder(s) used for CRL checks. If the CA services (OCSP, CRLs) are located behind a firewall, define also the SOCKS server.

    Defining the LDAP server is not necessary if the CA certificate contains a CRL Distribution Point or an Authority Info Access extension.

  3. Setting the certificate authentication method either under default settings (default-settings/server-authentication-methods) or per connection profile (profiles/profile/server-authentication-methods) defines that the server must authenticate with a certificate or else the authentication will fail.

    <server-authentication-methods>
      <auth-server-certificate />
    </server-authentication-methods>
    

For more information on the configuration file options, see ssh-broker-config(5).